The present invention relates to an automatic and continuous rice cooking system, and more particularly to a rice cooking system which comprises an elongated steam vessel provided with a screw conveyer therein and a passage to which steam is supplied, and in which is characterized in uncooked rice charged continuously at the inlet of the cooker is cooked and discharged out of the outlet of the system.
At caterers, hotels, and restaurants providing a large quantity of cooked rice at a time, or in businesses preparing secondary preservable products from cooked rice, a need for a system for cooking the rice continuously but without damaging the taste and the flavor is keenly felt.
A prior art system for continuously cooking the rice is disclosed, for example, in JPA Lay Open No. 19970/75. The system is structured to have a vertically inclined and elongated vessel in which a screw conveyer is provided. Water is retained at the bottom of said vessel, and by externally heating the water and by charging rinsed rice continuously inside the vessel at the bottom, the rice is cooked in the vessel at its bottom and then conveyed upward by means of the screw conveyer to be discharged from the vessel at the outlet provided at the upper end thereof.
Such elongated vessel with a screw conveyer is advantageous in that the rice is steamed and cooked in a continuous process when it is conveyed from one end to the other end of the vessel. However, because of the vessel being in an inclined arrangement, it is defective in that during the so-called steaming process when the rice cooked at the bottom of the vessel is conveyed upward by means of the screw conveyer to the upper portion of the vessel where there is no cooking juice, the cooked rice is inevitably subjected to kneading by the screw conveyer and collects into a doughy lump like a rice cake. This makes it impossible to obtain cooked rice retaining discrete grain forms when discharged from the outlet at the upper end of the vessel.